#it’s a LOT for a kid

[randomfandomisuppose]

Honestly a batfam fic I want to see, as someone who immigrated to a new country and had to learn a new language, is one where there’s a language barrier between Damian and the rest of the batfam. Also I think not a lot of people talk about how huge of a thing it is to suddenly be uprooted by one of your parents and moved halfway across the world like I was.

By language barrier I don’t necessarily mean that he only speaks Arabic (although that would also be fairly interesting) but also in the sense that even if he is fairly fluent he learned English from a textbook and doesn’t understand any slang or even random things in everyday use.

He gets confused by sayings he hasn’t heard before. He doesn’t know/remember the word for random household objects. Occasionally he pronounces a new word in an odd way. He meets someone with a strong accent he isn’t familiar with and suddenly he has trouble understanding what they’re trying to say. He tries to say something to someone else and suddenly blanks because the word he’s thinking of doesn’t exist in English. Sometimes he directly translates a word or saying into English and everyone else is slightly confused.

Something else I’ve also experienced is kinda feeling out of place because there are some things that I can’t share with people. Not in the sense of “oh I can’t tell them about it” but in the sense of “this is only funny in my own language” or just kind of feeling like an “other” because everyone around you is speaking their first language and you’re over here speaking your second, third or even fourth language.

Just people talking about the things they did or liked as kids and just not being able to relate at all cause you had completely different experiences. You learn their pop culture references and the everything into the intricacies and smallest details of their culture that they don’t even think about but they don’t know where your country is on a map, they don’t know how people speak there, the food, the cities, anything really. You spend your time learning everything about their culture, but it just feels so one sided because you’re speaking their language and they don’t speak a word of yours. Both literally and metaphorically. You are tuning yourself in on their wavelength constantly and not a lot of people will ever make much of an effort to tune into yours.

There is no one around you that you can have a conversation with in your own language, apart from maybe family, and you can’t easily find books in your language. The more you surround yourself with people from your new country the more easily you can feel like you’ve lost contact with your own country and your own language. The longer you stay in a new country the more you feel like if you went back to your own country you’d be just as out of place as you feel in the one you currently live in.

It goes the other way too. The more you look and sound like you fit in the more uncomfortable it gets because people like to put you in one box or the other and a lot of people don’t understand that you might never completely feel completely like one or the other is “your country”. You’ll never be completely the same as the people in the new country. You may know all the same cultural references as they do after some time but you don’t have the same emotional basis or nostalgia around it as they do. You don’t have the same acquired tastes as they do. There are things from your old country that used to be a common thing where you came from but just do not exist there.

You end up missing the dumb things. The differences in the trees. The food. The dumb children’s characters. The holidays. The dumb little sayings that people would have. Body language and verbal cues that people in your new country just do not have. The way buildings are built. The way the weeds in the pavement are different. The way even the DIRT has a different composition. The way the seasons aren’t the same, the difference in weather and temperature throughout the year. The shittiest, cheapest candy they sold in every store but don’t sell here.

This is all stuff I’ve experienced before myself and I think it would be fun for Damian to have some of the same experiences with it.

[vamprisms]

i feel like a lot of the 'i hate kids' crowd would be more tolerant if they understood that due to a kid's limited experience of the world that 4 hour flight might just be the longest they've ever had to sit still for or that trapped finger might literally be the most pain they've ever felt in their short life or they might not have ever seen a person with pink hair ever so of course they want to touch it or nobody's told them yet that they can't run around the museum and they only just learned cheetahs are the fastest animals so of course they want to put that to the test. how were they supposed to know etc etc.

[markwateneymemorialcrater]

Please note. The orange one is not included because A. He isn’t a billionaire. And B. Calling him obnoxious is too kind for him.

[hoofpeet]

Doing a full pivot in 2025 into dedicating this blog to Between the Lions fanart

[squarecloud73]

*I worship you Tumblr please don’t remove it

傳達不到的一些東西

Dumb school girl crush

[ryuuna]

can persephone please catch a break cuz that’s twice now she hasn’t been able to raise her kids due to divine fuckery 🫠

[sexhaver]

more than any other calvin and hobbes strip this one stays lodged in my consciousness

[kyri45]

:)

Ask box is closed until further notice for spoiler reasons.

“Part 8: A Dark, Long Night” will start on November 22nd, 1PM ET

Shadowpeach Bio Parent AU (PREV / FIRST / NEXT

[laughingcatwrites]

As a reminder that good exists out there, a coworker recently confessed to me that he found out his child is questioning their identity (kid's gender redacted for this post). The kid is keeping it from him, so he can't say anything to them or show that he knows, but he's doing his best to get mentally prepared and educated so that he'll be ready whenever his kid does feel comfortable enough come to him.

For context, this guy is a big, bulky middle aged dude who loves sports and typical outdoor "manly" activities. As his coworker and friend, I know he's a kind and sweet teddy bear of a person, but his kid probably views him as a stern, authoritarian figure, the way most teenagers view their parents. His family lives in a conservative area, so I'm sure between that, their dad's looks and interests, and the fact that their dad is a Figure of Authority, the kid is worried that they won't be accepted.

But you know what? When he found out about his kid, the first thing he did was reach out to his closest queer friend and ask for resources for parents of questioning children. His biggest fears are that his kid will be bullied or discriminated against and won't feel comfortable enough to be themself. His second action was to find himself a mentor in another parent who went the same situation (kid coming out in a conservative town). The other person is preparing him for some of the struggles his kid may face and the fights he may need to take on as a parent to make sure his kid is safe and treated well.

Something I want to emphasize for people focused on language as the primary method of allyship is that when we spoke, he used some outdated terms and thoughts about gender and sexuality. That does not make him bad. These were the terms and thinking used about questioning teenagers when he was growing up and he never needed to learn more current ones. But now that he does have that need, he's throwing himself in head first because that's his kid and he's darn well going to make sure that his kid feels welcomed and has a safe place to be themselves even if they never come out to him.

[inkskinned]

having good & true friends will literally save and protect you in a million unfathomable ways. like okay we have written so many times about lovers. but the way a platonic friend laughs and cries with you. the way they hold your hand at 14 years old and at 34. the way they keep a little silver tie to you, touching base over and over and over. how you can go years without talking, only to re-meet and discover: oh shit! you're still cool!

there are people who have been in my life for more than half of it, and i have loved every version of them. do you know how fucking beautiful that is. yeah love will save the world. but the way friends love you is gonna save the you.

[chloesimaginationthings]

Michael Afton’s happiest day in FNAF

[paintedcrows]

Biting you. Biting you. Biting-

[nyctosaurid]

don bluth films occupy a weird space because he's both inarguably an auteur who directs very strange, earnest, often "ugly" films but also a guy who near exclusively made movies for 8 year olds in the home video era. so basically everything he's ever done is a grimy, dreamy rumination on death and spirituality and has a direct to video sequel called something like secret of nimh 2: mrs. brisby's holiday adventure

[royaltea000]

“A thousand generations serve to praise…”

[jsheios]

splat 2 sketch comic for the starving agent 4 fans (me)

[pirateprincessjess]

I feel the need to periodically remind people that Idiocracy is a eugenics movie.

One of the things that eugenicists believe is that it is bad for society when the “wrong people” breed.

The entire premise of the movie is that “stupid people” kept having kids while “smart people” didn’t have kids, and it ruined society because stupid genes propagated while smart genes died out. This is eugenics propaganda.

I know people will read this and their response will be “actually it’s satire” but the movie isn’t satirizing eugenics. It’s satirizing anti-intellectualism, and consumerism, and it proposes eugenics as a solution.

When eugenics was first conceived, it was used as a way to justify inequality. The idea was that people who held privilege were able to do so because they were smarter and genetically superior to lazy and stupid people who don’t have privilege. Obviously this is bad and wrong, but it is also the core lesson of Idiocracy.

The movie literally ends with the main character becoming president and having “the smartest children in the world.” Because he and his wife have smarter genes than everyone else. The proposed solution for the things that Idiocracy is satirizing is for the smart people to have children that can be in charge of the world.

I know it’s fun to use this movie to dunk on anti-intellectualism and the MAGA movement, but we need to stop. When you quote and reference this movie you are spreading eugenics propaganda.